Monday, November 11, 2013

My Blog 1, Blog 2, and ultimately
my first reflection/response are all mish-mashed in my head and somewhat in my
written musings, and I thought I had submitted this (and likely did in the
wrong location and format), but my Canvas is showing no grade for it. So, I now return to my guttural response of what I
am/was most afraid of with tutoring. It is not each session, nor was it first
sessions, but rather personal outcomes that I am most afraid of—both the
students’ and my own.

I want them and me
to get the most out of tutoring as possible. That’s my bottom line. To
elaborate, I’m (or was) most afraid of not learning enough in this course to
make the course, my tutoring time and experience fruitful in the long run.I know the answer now to address that fear.I’ve learned amonton—that’s Spanish
slang for a lot, a heapload, a boatload .Critically, this monton has been about myself, my learning and tutoring/teaching
style and how I can enhance these; this monton
has led me to decide to change my major to a more relevant one—Spanish teaching
(Ogden City School District is nearly 50% Latino), and/or ESL, or I am even
entertaining a second M.A. in Educational Leadership and Policy, which could
prove a better fit since I love being in a higher education setting and have
not as yet been able to break into the public school system outright, even with
an ARL and teaching certificate in hand.

So, perhaps it is
serendipity/province that I was unsuccessful in submitting this blog properly the
first times(s) because I can and do now address my own initial concerns.Though I have made this journey before at a
writing center, have done tutoring, and have taught 1010 composition (actually,
I did both those things concurrently), have an advanced degree, I am still kept
up at night at times by having little to show for it as compared with others
(peers) with the same degree. I met such a person at the Rocky Mountain Peer
Tutoring Conference. He is now the Writing Center Director of Dixie State
University, an institution I attended right out of high school because I didn’t
want to be a number, but a name, a name I know I have not made for myself in
the world, such as it is.I only lasted a
school year there at Dixie, and barely that before I landed several semesters
at Weber State, including an intensive block English program summer.I look
back now and see all my education as stepping stones, and indeed, my education
is the one thing no one can take away from me.I may lose jobs by restructure/RIF, I may be holed up as a starving
poet/part-time philosopher in some relative’s basement or worse, but I know how
to learn, and I know enough about something that I have the great opportunity
of tutoring students who are beginning their writing journeys even as I muddle
in the middle of mine.Mine will not be
done until I take my last breath.

Though I realize
to leave my blog somewhat as it was will be nurturing my tendency to use the
blogs as therapy, to retain my honest first response, which is what a blog and
generating text should be, and that first response included the fact that I am
kept up at night also by fearing that I have less in common with the young
tutors and students than I did in days past.But, alas, this does not mean I am not learning—that common goal of us
all in this course, and of all peer tutors, and of all students. I am a student again, but I am also a tutor,
and deep in my heart, I am still a wanna-be teacher. ‘Nuff said.This is my edited blog ending; what follows
below was part of my first-response version. You can read on if you like, or
abandon ship at this point). That’s the beauty of writing and reading—it’s
re-doable, editable, and done only when you decide it’s done.

Bottom line: Will it have been
worth it after all, when I am a pinned and wriggling insect on a wall at the
end? (My time spent on T.S. Elliot starts to show here). Students, the professor
of every course, this one included, and I, all evaluate me in every present
moment (when we’re not preoccupied with ourselves alone). That assessing,
constant assessing, is part of academia and part of life. What worries or
concerns me is whether, to be cliché, I’ll cut the mustard, yes, but also
whether, even doing so sufficiently well, what gain this will win me in a
long-term employment vein? Though I love learning for its own sake and with it,
gleaning hopefully some wisdom, which I think is possible from every
tutor/tutee exchange, I suppose I long for the old American dream even if
tinged with the new American reality—i.e., if not a house, 2.5 children, a dog
and/or cat, at least the ability to be self-sufficient again. As the old Jiffy
Lube commercials used to say, “We don’t want to change the world, we just want
to change your oil.” I’d settle for the latter, but I know in so saying I am
indeed settling because I know that writing and writing well, has the power to
change the world. The power of the pen is
(or can be) mightier than the sword.So
far, my wielding of the pen and helping others wield it, has been more
self-transforming than world changing, but the world is made up of individual
souls, and so, I must be content with whatever I gain or give, in the course of
this course and through my tutoring running its semester’s course.